


A Friend Indeed

by Daphne_Bassett



Category: Behind Her Eyes (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi, Sophie doesn't have a last name for some reason huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:33:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29906682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daphne_Bassett/pseuds/Daphne_Bassett
Summary: What if Louise had called Sophie to come over that fateful night? And told her everything?
Relationships: David Ferguson/Louise Barnsley, Louise Barnsley & Sophie
Kudos: 1





	A Friend Indeed

They sat at the balcony and watched the sun set. The wine bottle from France stood half-empty on the table between them. The chime of a new message jolted Louise out of her stupor. But before she could reach phone, Sophie snatched it away.

“Hey!”

“You asked me here to give you moral support?” Sophie snapped, holding the phone high and out of Louise’s reach. “Do you want me to or not?”

“That could be David. Or Ian about Adam.”

Sophie looked up to stare at the phone, cleverly not lowering it down. Her eyes widened and her lips thinned. “It’s neither.”

Louise’s heart thumped. “It’s Adele, isn’t it? What does it say?”

Sophie shook her head firmly. “I’m not telling you.”

“Hey!-”

“David told you to stay away from her, and the first thing you did when you got home was call her to tell her his plans!”

Louise made a strangled cry. “I had to try. I had to beg her to save him. David could go to jail for the rest of his life for something he didn’t do.”

“And did it help?” Sophie snapped.

“You’re supposed to be helping me.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do. You’ve been all alone with all this for too long. I told-” She checked herself at the look on Louise’s face. “You know Adele probably killed Rob, right?”

Louise shuddered. Neither she nor David had said it, the implication too huge to consider. But she had seen it in his eyes, and he in hers. 

If Adele had killed Rob, then there had been a bigger reason than an accidental heroin overdose. The fire at her parents’s house - the one that David had been investigated for. Perhaps Rob had stumbled onto something during their time together. Perhaps the detectives had been investigating the wrong person.

“What does she say?” Louise asked more calmly this time. 

“Nothing that you can change, Lou,” Sophie said firmly. She considered the phone, then put it in her back-pocket. “I’m not giving this back until tomorrow.” 

To her surprise, Louise just nodded. “OK.”

Sophie came to sit beside her. “I’m glad you called me over.”

“I’m glad you believed me,” Louise said, still feeling the shock of that. She had been hysterical when she narrated everything to Sophie. And she did mean everything. Not just her twisted relationship with David and Adele. Or her trip to Brighton, or her stupidity in sending a letter accusing David to Scotland Yard. But also about the lucid dreams, the astral projection. Stuff that sounded mad even to her own ears.

But Sophie had just nodded and accepted everything. When Louise had finished, Sophie said. “I told you she was Jane Eyre.”

“You mean Mrs Rochester,” Louise corrected automatically, then burst into tears. “I thought you’d think I was crazy.”

“You are crazy for not telling me all this sooner,” Sophie retorted.

Now she took out a stick from the cigarette pack. Louise looked surprised. “I thought you quit.”

“I thought you did.”

Louise shrugged. She stared out in the night, her thoughts racing. “Adele helped me. With my night terrors. I started sleeping better. And I realized I didn’t need these.”

“She was manipulating you from the start. You know that right? Everything from your first meeting on.”

“But she was helping me too. With my dreams. Getting me healthier…”

“Why though? Not for anything good for you. She could have stopped the affair at any time. Why didn’t she? She had a plan, I tell you.” 

Louise frowned. “She told me she wanted me to choose her.” 

Sophie scoffed. “She said that to make you feel guilty. But that’s a bloody lie. If she broke into a woman’s house for just _talking_ to her husband, she would have done much worse to you. But she didn’t, so why?”

“I don’t know. I keep thinking about it over and over in my head and I can’t come up with a reason.”

“Well whatever she’s planning, it’s not going to work.” Sophie tapped her back-pocket where the phone was. Louise resisted the urge to ask for it, or try to grab it. Her friend was right. Whatever Adele wanted, it was for no good. 

* * *

The landline was ringing. It took Louise a moment to even recognize the sound. The archaic device hanging in the kitchen wall basically existed to buzz in a repairman or the most persistent telemarketers. She automatically started walking to, when Sophie held up a warning hand. She picked it up instead.

It was from Adele, Sophie mouthed before turning her back to Louise. She didn’t tell Louise what Adele wanted, but her face was grim and tight throughout its duration. She said nothing except "no" repeatedly then hung up.

“She can really see everything here, can’t she?” Sophie asked, looking spooked.

“I thought you believed me,” Louise cried.

“Believing what you said is one thing, actually realizing that an invisible psychopath is watching our every move is another thing.” Sophie shuddered. “Louise, can I say for the one hundredth time that I’m so glad you called me over?”

“You can’t do anything as an aura, spirit, ghost whatever…” Louise waved her hand in exasperation at her own ignorance of this subject. “Just hover around and spy on people.”

“That’s more than enough,” Sophie said. “Maybe we should speak in code or something.”

“I could look,” Louise said, the idea suddenly occurring to her. She was actually surprised she hadn’t thought of this earlier. “I could…  _ go  _ …” she waved her hands around in a poor attempt to communicate what she meant to Sophie. “And see what’s she’s up to.”

Sophie’s eyes widened, but she shook her head. “She knows you can do that. She’ll have prepared for it.”

“There’s no way-”

“She knows more about this stuff than you do. Don’t go anywhere, Louise. You asked me here to look after you, so let me do it.”

Reluctantly, Louise nodded. 

Adele called back twice, and Sophie ran interference both times. Her face was white after the last one. 

“What did she say?” Louise insisted. “This was different. Tell me.”

“I’m calling Ian,” Sophie said, taking out her own phone.

Louise felt like if she had just swallowed a stone and it lodged inside her ribs. “Adam…”

“Adam will be safe as long as Ian knows what to look out for,” Sophie reassured her. When Louise grabbed at her backpocket, Sophie grabbed Louise’s hands tightly. “She’s desperate. She had a plan and it’s not working. She’s trying to trip you. Don’t let her succeed.”

Louise curled into a ball on the sofa and let Sophie make the call. She was careful, picking her words cleverly but Ian wasn’t an idiot. Especially when Louise insisted on speaking to Adam even though he had already gone to bed.

“Hi baby,” she said, fighting back her tears.

“Mommy, I’m tired,” he grumbled.

“I know, I’m sorry. I just missed you.”

“Missed you, too Mom. G’night,” he finished with a big yawn. “Lisa wants to say hi.”

“Sure, what?”

“Hello, Louise.” 

Louise swallowed hard. She had never spoken to Lisa. Not once. Not even while Adam had been in France. She’d long moved past the grudge she held against the idea of the other woman, the concept of the New and Improved Mrs. Barnsley. And she had meant it when she told Ian to thank her and extend her well wishes. But there was still a wall between them. 

A wall that wasn’t entirely of her own making, Louise reminded herself. Conversation worked both ways.

So why now?

She braced herself for this, whatever it was, it couldn’t be anything good.

“ _ You shouldn’t leave your house if you can’t lock it behind you. _ ”

Whatever Louise expected to hear, it wasn’t this. 

“What?”

“I was told you to tell you this,” Lisa continued, as if that explained anything. “That it would make sense to you.”

“You were told… What?”

“ _ You shouldn’t leave your house if you can’t lock it behind you. _ Does that mean anything to you?”

The image of a second door hovering about the pond formed in Louise’s mind. She nodded. Then realized Lisa couldn’t hear her, and managed a stifled. “Yes.”

“Good. Ian wants to talk. We should have tea sometime soon, Louise. Cheers.”

“Louise, what’s going on?” Ian asked before Louise’s head could stop reeling.

“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow, I promise.”

“OK,” he said after a long pause. Their relationship had really come a long way, Louise thought with quiet wonder when she handed Sophie’s phone back to her. She told Sophie what Lisa said.

"What the fuck," Sophie whispered Louise's sentiments exactly. 

When the landline rang again, Sophie ignored it. 

“Ian can call me directly. David has your number.”

“You need to talk to her,” Louise said dully. She had gone back to sitting in a ball, feeling like if she would die of anxiety and self-recrimination before the dawn. “To know what she’s planning.”

With a sigh, Sophie picked the call. “Look here… Oh, it’s you.” She looked over at Louise. “It’s David.”

Louise catapulted across the room, as Sophie held out the phone looking reluctant. “I have half a mind not to give this to you. I’m just as angry with him as with his crazy wife. What was he thinking, dragging you into all this?”

Louise snatched the phone from Sophie and took a deep breath, trying to force herself to sound calm, posed, not borderline hysterical. “Hi.”

“Hey, Lou.”

And it was like magic. All the fear and anxiety just melted away at the sound of his voice. She slumped against the wall, clutching the phone to her ear. “David.”

“I’m OK,” he said to her unanswered question. “Still waiting to see the detective. Apparently he’s out on a case. The officers here want me to come back tomorrow but… I don’t want to risk it.”

_She has a way of knowing things. Things she shouldn’t._

Louise should have warned him. But he hadn’t given her time. There’ll be time in the future, she told herself. If they could just get through the night. For some unexplainable reason, she knew that if they just got through today safely, then they’d be fine.

“I told Adele,” she confessed, because she still hated herself a little for this. “I’m so sorry, I know you said I shouldn’t. But I was so scared for you. I thought I could talk her, scare her into doing the right thing.”

“It’s OK, Lou,” he said gently. “I’m not surprised even. You won’t be you if you stopped trying to do the right thing for everyone.” He chuckled softly. “Even taking her side before. When you thought I was the bad guy. You’re the worst mistress ever, you know that right?”

Louise laughed, and sniffled back her tears. 

“I don’t hold that against you. I want you to know that.”

Her heart skipped. She didn’t like the way he sounded. “Don’t give up, David. Don’t you dare. You’re innocent and the truth will come out.”

He chuckled again. “Are you saying you won’t visit me in prison?”

“I won’t have to.”

He was silent for a while. “I love you, Louise. I want you to know that.”

“David-”

“He’s here. I’ll call you… when I can.”

“David, I l-” But the line was already dead. 

Sophie came to stand beside her, her hand on her back, and Louise turned into her friend’s hug, crying now that she wasn’t pretending to be strong, now that there was no reason to hold back. “I never said it back,” she cried, her shoulders shaking. “Everytime he told me he loved me. I never said it back.”

* * *

Louise woke up to the smell of pizza.

It had been a rough night. At least two more calls from Adele before she finally quit. They had finally fallen asleep in the living room. Sophie had laid herself out on the couch and under a blanket. Louise had planned on going into the room, but had ended up dozing off on the arm chair.

Now she blinked awake to bright morning light and the sight of her friend behind a half-empty pizza box.

“Thank goodness for 24 hours service,” Sophie declared. She tossed Louise’s phone at her. Barely awake, Louise tried to grab it and missed. “You should probably check out the news first before reading those.”

The TV box was on. Louise had not even noticed. She wiped at her bleary eyes as she tried to make sense of the images and headline scrolling across the screen.

BREAKING. FIRE IN NORTH LONDON MANSION. ARSON SUSPECTED.

“The bitch tried to ‘kill’ herself,” Sophie made air quotes. “With sleeping pills and set the house on fire. Somehow miraculously had a change of heart, and crawled her away out in time for the EMS to arrive.”

Louise picked up her phone, scanned through the messages that were started out as resigned and apologetic, then became increasingly vitriolic and accusing. 

“She wanted me there,” Louise said slowly. “That was part of her plan.”

“To kill you both?” Sophie suggested. “If she can’t have him, no one else can?”

That made sense, of course. Yet… Louise had a sudden flash. Of her … spirit or ghost or whatever you call it … hovering over her own prone body, Adam screaming at her to wake. Another flash. Trying desperately to shake a seemingly lifeless Adele awake.

_If she can’t have him, no one else can._

_“Am I the crazy one?”_ Adele’s pale face, her eyes almost unblinking in earnestness. _“After all this, I still just want him to love me again?”_

_ "You shouldn’t leave your house if you can’t lock it behind you." _

A spider of horror crawled over Louise and the remote fell out of her shaking fingers.

"Louise, are you OK?" Sophie cried.

 _Oh my god no_ , Louise screamed inside her head. _She couldn’t have! It’s not even possible. Because if it is… Oh my god!_

“What is it, Louise? What's going on?"

“I think,” Louise said through numb lips. “I know why she wanted me there last night.”

* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Again, no beta! So please let me know of any typos, etc.  
> I have some ideas on what happens next. I don't think "Rodele" would give up David easily, failed suicide or not. If anyone wants me to continue the story on this timeline, let me know in the comments.  
> Also people need to write more fiction for this fandom! I can't be the only one. It's positively brimming with potential!


End file.
